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he was comparing the feel of her to Jillian, he cursed silently and took the blonde’s kiss deeper. When he set her back from him, her breathing was unsteady, her eyes wide with shock.
    “Well, glad to see you, too, big guy.”
    “Okay, Agent Carlson, that’s enough.” Frank Campbell stood up from the table in the connecting room’s shadowed corner. “I think your television show’s on.” The medium-height, fiftyish agent shook Drake’s hand, then walked over and shut the connecting door. John Alonzo, the case officer, nodded to Drake.
    The rookie agent would be watching the parking lot, using the television volume to muffle any missing sounds of passion from prying ears. The noise served a purpose, but Drake didn’t get people who made love with the television blaring. They were missing out on the nuances of pleasure. Call him a romantic, but he believed his partners, however casual, deserved his full and complete attention.
    “You okay, Drake?”
    Damn. He’d never thought about passion at one of these meets before. Blast Jillian MacGregor.
    “Yeah. Fine.” He sat down, leaned forward. “I think we might get a bonus.”
    Alonzo’s head jerked up from his notes, his dark eyes narrowing. “What’s happening?”
    “A big shipment coming in on the twenty-first. Hafner’s playing it very close to the vest with me, lots of phone calls on his unmonitored line. Usually he likes to puff about the size of his haul. He seems nervous, but excited. My gut tells me it’s big. A nice add to the haul on this raid.”
    “I’ll alert the team to make adjustments. We’ll be in touch. Still think he’ll run it through the bayous?”
    Drake nodded. “Something this important to him, it only makes sense. It’s harder to track shipments being threaded up through bayou country.” Going through major ports meant involving too many people. Hafner had always used shrimp boats to send and receive his shipments in bits and pieces. More time-consuming, to be sure, but much safer from detection. Less loss if the contraband is divided and something goes wrong.
    He was also economical; the same craft that moved arms one way generally shipped cocaine in the other. No sense wasting transportation. Just business sense, Hafner would say.
    “So tell me about the progress on your end,” Drake prompted.
    Alonzo leaned forward. “We go to the grand jury tomorrow to get the indictments in place. We’ll adjust the arrest date to the twenty-first and coordinate with the Germans and Italians.” He smiled. “We’re in good shape, Cullinane. It’s going to work.”
    “We’ll move to Delta phone contact system, effective immediately.” Frank rummaged through his notebook. “Here are the numbers we’ll have staffed twenty-four/seven. This one’s your primary get-out number if anything goes wrong before then.”
    Drake scanned the printout, entering the numbers into files on his phone contact list under various women’s names. Should anyone break his password, it would look like the names of his ‘hookers’. If someone persisted enough to call, each of these would be answered with varying escort service names.
    He didn’t kid himself that Hafner couldn’t have someone watching him as closely as he watched everyone else for Hafner. He’d made his quarters safe, but that was his only refuge. Even there, he still took precautions.
    Finished, he settled back and waited for Frank to stop writing notes to himself.
    Without raising his head, Frank spoke up. “So what’s got you so edgy?”
    “This operation isn’t enough?”
    Frank stared. “You don’t rattle easy.”
    Drake sighed. He wasn’t ready to discuss Jillian—with anyone. He had no choice, though. “There’s someone new around. A woman.”
    Frank’s gaze held steady. “Hafner’s new squeeze?”
    “No.”
    “Why’s she there?”
    “Says she wants to be a bodyguard.” He chuckled, remembering. “She picked a hell of a job application.” As he told them